Facts are measured in terms of truth/non-truth. Interpretations and opinions are measured in terms of quality. Unless, of course, you're Lou Dobbs.
“What you won’t see on our broadcast is ‘fair and balanced journalism.’ You will not see ‘objective journalism.’ The truth is not ‘fair and balanced.’ ”
“Everything I believe, I believe unequivocally.”
Interesting, too, to observe in the New Yorker story how easily he switched from being pro-business when he professionally and personally/financially stood to benefit from that stance to the current angry populist and rabid anti-immigrant.
Regular viewers of “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” on CNN, might be surprised at the venue that Dobbs chose for lunch not long ago: the Grill Room of the Four Seasons, a midtown bastion of the very same political and business “élites” that he denounces daily on his television program. The Four Seasons is the enduring commissary of the Old Guard, where Henry Kissinger waves to the former Citigroup C.E.O. Sandy Weill, there is limo-lock at the side door, and the regulars have their checks sent to the office. Dobbs’s Town Car left him at the door, on East Fifty-second Street, and the restaurant’s co-owner, Julian Nicolini, embraced him that day as warmly as when he welcomed, among others, Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and C.E.O. of the Blackstone Group; Nelson Peltz, the C.E.O. of Trian Partners; Edgar Bronfman, Sr., the former chairman and C.E.O. of Seagram; and Mortimer Zuckerman, the real-estate developer and publisher of the News. Nicolini led Dobbs to one of five choice banquettes, and Dobbs settled in, looking very much at home.
Dobbs is sixty-one, and his chubby face has a rosy glow. His blond hair is lacquered in place, his black wing tips are impeccably buffed. Other club members having lunch that day—the Nobel Prize winner James Watson, Bronfman, Peltz, the movie producer Harvey Weinstein—stopped at the table to say hello. It is the kind of welcome that one might have expected for an earlier incarnation of Lou Dobbs—the Harvard-educated anchor of CNN’s “Moneyline,” which in the nineteen-nineties served as a sort of video clubhouse for corporate America. But, in the past four years or so, Dobbs has been reborn as a populist—a full-throated champion of “the little guy,” an evangelical opponent of liberal immigration laws. His hour-long program, which airs at six, features Dobbs in a role that combines Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan. On the air, he boomingly assails the upper management of corporate America for its “outrageous” greed, pay packages, and corruption, its opposition to increasing the minimum wage, its hiring of “illegal aliens,” its ties to “Communist China,” and its eagerness to send American jobs overseas.
The new Lou Dobbs often surprises those who recall the old Lou Dobbs of “Moneyline.” Daniel Henninger, the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, wrote, “Old admirers are aghast. It’s as if whatever made Linda Blair’s head spin around in ‘The Exorcist’ had invaded the body of Lou Dobbs and left him with the brain of Dennis Kucinich,” a reference to the left-wing Ohio congressman and former Presidential aspirant. After an angry altercation on the show with James Glassman, a former New Republic publisher and current conservative supply-sider, Glassman said of Dobbs, “How did he transform from a business sycophant to a raving populist?” Glassman’s answer was that Dobbs had begun to “demagogue these issues.” (In questioning Glassman’s economic theories on his program, Dobbs accused him of talking “like a cult member.”) As if to answer such critics, Dobbs has recently published a book whose title is almost as long as the menu at the Grill Room: “War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and HOW TO FIGHT BACK.”
On the cover, Dobbs is standing—hands in pockets, feet apart—like a sentry protecting the boundaries of decency and the nation. At CNN, alone among the cable network’s anchors, he is allowed to express his opinions without borders. “I’m never neutral on any issue that affects the common good, our national interest, and working men and women of this country,” he writes. In many ways, Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, who in 2003 wrote a book entitled “Who’s Looking Out for You?,” are kindred spirits. Dobbs, who lives on a three-hundred-acre farm in a prosperous part of New Jersey, admires his own capacity for compassion and self-effacement. His audience, he writes, knows that he cares “more about them and their lives than about being invited to the White House or playing golf with C.E.O.s and celebrities.”
[ . . . ]
“It’s very different from any program you’ll see on TV, by intention,” Dobbs said, as we ordered the fifty-six-dollar Dover sole.
He must not be familiar with Bill O'Reilly's show. Or else the two are "very different" because Dobbs alone is the speaker of truth.
As a television anchor, Dobbs earns well and lives well. I don't see why that is relevant when it comes to his stand in favor of the American middle class. At least he has not forgotten about the little guy - unlike many other elites (on the left or on the right).
The bottom line, according to me, is that Dobbs is the *only* one who is asking the questions: what about the best interests of the American middle class and the poor? What about the fact that laws are being broken by *corporations* when they hire illegal workers at below-market wages? Are we a nation of comsumers served by corporations or are we also a nation of values, ideas and laws?
People who favor illegal immigration forget that the illegals are being exploited - albeit with their compliance. Worse, they forget that by being sympathetic to the "plight" of the illegals they are acting as accomplices of the very corporations that they would otherwise hold accountable for their exploitative practices. Along the way, it is the corporations that are laughing all they way to the bank!
Posted by: PIAW | December 03, 2006 at 07:24 AM
Lou’s just an old crank. If you watch him with the same attitude you’d watch Andy Rooney, it can actually be pretty entertaining. You should hear his interview on a recent NPR “On the Media” (available by podcast). Some of what he has to say is valid – human rights for workers, the struggles of the American middle class to make ends meet, etc. I just wish he wasn’t such a nativist, evoking racist sentiments and advocating stupid solutions like building a wall along the border. I personally go on his website every once in awhile to answer his so-called “polls” just to skew the results.
Posted by: Archana | December 03, 2006 at 08:55 AM
I'm confused as to why you are so opposed to Dobbs.
Do you disagree with his policies? You don't mention them. You only address the surface appearance.
If he took the "impeccably buffed black wingtips" off his feet, let his "laquered hair" grow into a poytail, grew a beard and traded in his Italian pinstripes and neckties for overalls, would that make a difference?
Posted by: J Wellington | January 13, 2007 at 04:24 PM